Stopped pummeling. Stopped thinking. Stopped seeing. Stopped feeling.
The last thing he remembered was the hesitant touch of a soft hand on his brow. The soothing sounds of a trembling, terrified voice telling him it was over. It was over.
It was over …
ELEVEN
“HEY, TOUGH GUY. ABOUT time you put in an appearance.”
Elena was surprised to hear her voice sound so easy and casual. So … unconcerned, when inside, she quaked with relief as Seth struggled to open his eyes.
She’d been so afraid for him. Too afraid to leave his side for more than an hour since the park rescue chopper had evaced them into Flagstaff yesterday.
God. Had it really been yesterday? It seemed … well, it seemed that she was still living the nightmare.
But it was over.
Clyde Devine was dead. He’d died as he’d lived. Violently. Brutally. On the wrong side of good.
Jake had two broken legs. Seth’s deadfall trap had done its worst. The careening boulder had rolled over Jake as he’d scrambled in vain to get out of the way. He wasn’t in great shape, but he would survive long enough for trial. Benny Cravets, however, hadn’t been so lucky. A stray rock shot out of the debris of the deadfall trap and had hit him in the temple. Killed him on impact.
Seth, thank God, was alive. And now that he’d opened his eyes, Elena took a life-sustaining breath too.
Hope. Luck. And maybe.
Seemed they were enough to get by on after all.
She studied his beautiful, bruised face. As weak as he was, Seth still looked big and dark and strong against the stark-white hospital sheets. And yet she knew how much blood he’d lost before help had arrived and he’d gotten the medical attention he needed.
She knew and she remembered every soul-testing moment as she’d made bandages out of a dead man’s shirt. Called for help using a dead man’s radio.
She shivered, recalling the lifeless weight and soulless eyes of Clyde Devine as she’d frantically stripped him of his shirt. She’d felt like a ghoul, robbing the dead. But she hadn’t cared. Seth had been bleeding out. She wasn’t going to let that happen. So she’d done what she’d had to do.
That had been close to twenty-four hours ago and this was the first breath of true relief she’d let herself take since.
His eyes were glazed and unfocused, but they were open as he struggled toward lucidity.
Lord, his face was a mess. His left jaw was swollen twice the size of the right, his mouth was wired shut to support the broken bones.
“Easy, buddy. You’re fine. You probably hurt like hell, but you’re fine.”
Elena lifted her gaze to Lieutenant Dan Gates. The relief in his voice was as palpable as the relief she felt. Seth’s superior had been holding vigil by Seth’s bed with her for the past few hours. Hours in which she’d caught Dan staring at her with veiled curiosity, obviously wondering about the part of the story she’d left out.
The part that even she couldn’t believe had happened. The part about making love with Seth. The part about falling in love with him.
The part that now, under the stark, harsh hospital lights and in the same stark harsh face of reality, seemed as remote and as far removed from the real world as the nightmare they’d both lived through in the Canyon.
“He’s awake?”
Elena turned as a nurse walked in. The name tag on the white uniform told them that Lisa, a thirty-something blonde with a big smile and a lot of bounce, was an LPN. She’d slipped into the room to take Seth’s vitals and neither Elena nor Dan had heard her.
“Just.” Dan moved away from the bed so Lisa could take care of business.
“Fantastic,” Lisa said with enough cheer to lead a basketball team to victory. “I’ll let the doc know.”
“Don’t suppose … a man … could get some water?”
Seth. Voice raspy and weak and garbled by the limitation of his broken jaw. And so beautiful, Elena fought tears.
“Not just yet, hero,” Lisa said with a chuckle. “But if you ask real nice, I might be persuaded to get you some ice chips.”
An agitated grunt from the bed. “Pretty please … with pepper on it.”
Both Elena and Dan grinned. Lisa too, although she was already on her way out the door to do Seth’s bidding.
“You had us worried,” Dan said, moving back into Seth’s line of sight.
Seth squinted up at Dan. “What the hell … you doing here? And where … is here, anyway?”
“Flagstaff. You’re in the hospital. You were shot, remember?”
It took a moment but Elena saw the second that recognition dawned.
“Elena,” Seth said, becoming agitated. He struggled to sit up.
“I’m right here.” She moved in quickly, took his hand in hers to settle him. “I’m fine. I’m fine,” she repeated when he collapsed with a groan of pain and relief.
He turned his gaze to hers. His features softened through a haze of medication and fatigue. “Fine,” he repeated weakly and his eyes drifted shut again.
SETH LOOKED LIKE HIS father, Elena realized the next day when both Bill and Wanda King arrived to make certain their son was truly alive and going to make it.
Nice people, she thought, watching from the door of Seth’s hospital room. Very nice.
But not her people. Not her life. Just like Seth could never be her life. A bubble, she reminded herself as she left the hospital. What had happened, what they had shared—it was just a bubble in time. Now life went on. As it had before.
He was a cop with an attitude.
She was the assistant DA thorn in his side.
Fate had pitted them together. A life or death struggle had remolded their perimeters. Shifted everything out of focus, thrown everything out of place.
Temporarily.
Well. Soon everything would be back to status quo. As much as it hurt to think it, as much as it pained her to accept it, the truth was, business as usual would pit them against each other in court again. Then the reality that they would often be shoring up opposite sides of the fence would take a toll.
Oil and water.
Fire and ice.
Miles apart and passionate about the differences.
So no. Elena would be a fool to think anything had truly changed between them.
They would never again be enemies. But in the long haul, it was not in the cards for them to be friends.
Or lovers, she thought sadly and turned and walked away.
The next day, she put in for a month’s leave. She had more than that coming. And it was time.
She went home. Where her mom cooked for her and told her she was too thin and her dad told her she should get married and give him more grandbabies.
Home. Where she could forget about Seth King’s kisses and start the process of life as she had once known it without him in it.
TWELVE
2 months later.
“DAMMIT, ELENA, YOU KNOW that’s a pile of crap!”
“Order in the court!” The rap of a gavel rang like buckshot through the crowded courtroom.
Elena cringed as Seth, in full uniform, shot to his feet on the witness stand and glared between her and Judge Harrison. It was Seth’s third outburst in as many weeks before the same judge. Harrison was at the end of his rope in the patience department.
“He’s guilty,” Seth went on, his face red with rage. “We all know he’s guilty of a felony and she wants to slap him with a misdemeanor!”
“I will have order in my court!” Harrison slammed the gavel so hard Elena was afraid he was going to break it.
The room suddenly echoed in silence.
“Councilor.” Judge Harrison’s bushy white brows pinched in anger as he glared at Elena. “You will see me in my chambers. Now. And you,” he added with a sharp glance at Seth, who sat in the witness chair in full uniform, “you will join us.”
Face hard and unreadable, Seth shot a covert glance at Elena as he pushed himself o
ut of the witness chair and followed both her and the judge.
“You are both officers of the court,” Harrison admonished without preamble as he closed the door behind them. “As such, it is my expectation that you will work out your differences prior to setting foot in my courtroom. Is that clear?”
Elena nodded. From the corner of her eye she saw Seth, standing at parade rest beside her, do the same.
“He’s your witness,” Harrison went on, a full-fledged scowl darkening his wizened face as his gaze locked on Elena. “It would be my expectation, then, that he would not be hostile. You’ve got two minutes. Work it out or I’m going to find you both in contempt.” In a rustle of flowing black robes, he strode back out the door.
Leaving them alone together for the first time since Elena had left Seth in the hospital surrounded by his family two months ago.
She folded her arms over her midriff, stared at a spot on the floor in front of the toe of her shoe.
She could feel Seth’s gaze burning a hole into the top of her head. Knew she should say something. Couldn’t make herself speak.
He, however, had no such compunctions.
“This is it, then? This is the way you want things between us?”
More than hard-edged anger. Disappointment. Resentment. Pain. None of it, she knew, had anything to do with the case she was trying. She’d been avoiding him. For his sake as much as her own.
Still she couldn’t speak. Except for two words. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Jesus, Elena. You skipped. Dropped off the face of the earth.”
Of course this discussion couldn’t be about the case. It had to be about them. Because whatever was left about them was unfinished.
“So … it was nothing? What we shared? What I thought we’d become to each other? Nothing?”
Confusion joined the anger and disappointment in his tone. And almost broke her heart.
“We both knew nothing could come of it,” she replied.
He was silent for a long moment. Watching her. Struggling with emotions she was surprised were so strong.
“And we knew that why? We knew that how? How exactly did we know that? You tell me. You tell me why I can’t love you. You tell me why you can’t love me. Because of our jobs?” He made a sound of disgust. “Screw that. They’re jobs. They’re not our lives.”
So … there was this problem with her reasoning. A problem that had been plaguing her since she’d left him in that hospital bed. What if she was wrong? What if … what if there was something more? What if … what if she could take the chance and love him?
Tears filled her eyes as she met his, and found his eyes misty too. She swallowed back a sob. Let the tears fall, slow and warm down her cheeks. God, she was a fool. “For a supposedly smart woman … I made a pretty stupid mistake, huh?”
He searched her face, evidently saw what he needed there. Came to her. Drew her carefully against him. Then he crushed her to his chest where she clung and clutched at his uniform and felt the knot that had cramped in her heart for two long months finally ease.
“Yeah, well. No more stupid than me,” he said, tipping her face up to his, “for letting you get by with dodging me for this long.”
He kissed her then. Deeply. So very, very sweetly. “God, I’ve missed you.”
“Me too,” she managed, although her voice broke.
He kissed her again. Again, feasting on her lips like he was claiming a reward for a long, hard battle of wills.
“Do you really think there’s a prayer we can make this work?” she asked, snuggling close against him. “I mean … case in point … this case. We’re butting heads like bighorn sheep again.”
“What I think,” he said against her hair, “is that I’ll never forgive myself or you if we don’t at least give it a try.”
Yes. They needed to try. She only hoped it would be enough.
One month later
“DAMMIT, ELENA, YOU can’t do this!”
Elena looked up from Larry Olson’s desk where they’d been conferring on the fine points of a brief to see Seth—all six long, rangy feet of him—stalk into the DA’s office.
He looked lean, mean and mad. Typical.
“Must you always make an entrance, Detective?” she sputtered as every head in the common area turned at Seth’s bull-seeing-red stance.
One by one, office doors circling the central pool opened. Heads popped out, saw the thunder in Seth’s cobalt-blue eyes and made hasty retreats back to the relative safety of their cramped office quarters.
“I take it you have a problem, Detective King?” Elena straightened and met him eye to eye.
“Damn straight, I do.”
“What a surprise.”
His eyes burned into hers, all pissed-off male with a bone to pick.
“Fine. Let’s take this into my office. No need to disrupt the entire building.”
“We can take it anywhere you want to. But we’re going to do this now.”
Same old Seth, Elena thought, as she turned and walked with the easy gait of a woman who had all the time in the world. Inside she was quaking. “Follow me.”
She received a surly grunt for her efforts but he followed her. He was right on her heels as she reached her private office, opened her door and stepped aside for him to enter ahead of her.
Then she joined him. Closed and locked the door behind her, steeling herself for the confrontation to come.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve barging in here like this.”
He caught her up against him and dragged her into his arms. “Door’s closed, babe. You can drop the act.”
“You were supposed to be here an hour ago,” she murmured urgently, wrapping her arms around him and sinking into his greedy mouth.
“Couldn’t be helped,” he whispered around long, hungry kisses before finally tearing his lips away from hers. He smiled against her mouth. “Damn, I needed that.”
She looped her arms around his neck, content in a way she’d never thought she could be. “That makes two of us.”
“You really think we’re fooling them?” He backed across the room, walking her with him until his hips bumped the corner of her desk.
He perched on the edge of the desk, made a place for her between his spread thighs and drew her tightly against him.
“Oh, they’re definitely guessing. I mean … you show up here a lot these days, you know.”
He lowered his mouth to her neck, reached up to loosen the pin holding her hair in a neat little knot on the top of her head. “A guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do. This suit drives me crazy, you know.”
“It’s a plain black suit,” she pointed out as he peeled the jacket down her shoulders and helped her shimmy out of it.
“That’s what I mean. Plain black over a body that’s anything but plain. Umm.” He worked the buttons on her white blouse. “Take for instance, this bra.” He reached for the front clasp and flicked it open, peeled the lacy cups away from her breasts. “It’s a miracle of modern engineering.”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she pointed out breathlessly as he lowered his head and pinched an erect nipple between his teeth.
“How you spend your lunch break is your business … and mine,” he murmured.
She sucked in her breath on a gasp when he reached up under her short skirt and skimmed his thumb around the leg of her lacy panties.
“Detective,” she whispered breathlessly, trying with desperation to invoke a little protest. Trying and failing when he neatly skimmed her panties down her hips and shoved them to the floor.
“You need a cop, lady?” He nuzzled her hair aside, bit her jaw. “Tell me your problem. I promise, I can fix it.”
“For an officer of the court, you’re a very naughty man.”
“You filing a complaint?”
“No,” she let her head loll to the side so he could kiss her there, “but all these ridiculous law-and-order clichés could get me disbarred.”
He laughed, shifted their weight abruptly until she was sitting on the edge of the desk, her ankles locked around his waist as he worked desperately to lower his zipper.
“Hurry,” she demanded in a husky whisper that changed to a gasp when he freed himself and plunged deep inside of her.
It was always like this between them. The rush. The joy. The unadulterated desire that simmered, then boiled, then fed a need so huge it consumed them.
“Shh,” Seth crooned as he gripped her around the waist with one arm and covered her mouth with a big, rough hand. “They’ll think I’m attacking you.”
She groaned again, then fell back onto the top of her desk and let him take her under.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” His breath was gruff and raspy as he gripped her hips in both hands, stilled the action of his hips and simply stared at her.
She knew how she looked. Her hair undone and wild around her face. Her arms languid and limp, lying palms-up on either side of her head. Her blouse open, her bra lost somewhere in the tangle, her skirt pushed up around her waist.
And she thought, Yeah, I know exactly how I look in his eyes. He thinks I’m the sexiest woman on earth. And with him, she was.
“And do you know how amazing you are?” She met his eyes, watched them fog over as she locked her ankles tighter around his waist and arched her pelvis into his.
“You’re going to make me come,” he groaned.
“Poor baby. No control. No control at all,” she teased, tightened her inner muscles around him and slowly licked her lips.
Another groan as his fingers dug into her hips and he plunged hard and deep. “You’re playing with fire here. But you already know that, don’t you?”
“I know that I love you,” she whispered, lifting a hand to trail a finger down the muscled length of his chest, down his tense abdomen, then lower to touch the root of him where he pressed deep inside of her.
He growled, low and primal and plunged one final time, sending them both over the edge of control in a rush of glorious sensation.
“Will I ever not want you this way?” he whispered moments later as he drew her to a sitting position and held her tightly against him.